The answer for most foreign buyers is both: use Idealista or Kyero to find the property and a local agency to buy it. The portals show what is for sale and pass your enquiry to whoever placed the listing, usually an agency working for the seller. A portal alone is enough if you live locally, speak Spanish and have a lawyer; from abroad, somebody must visit, check and negotiate.
Key Takeaways
- ✓ Idealista and Kyero are advertising portals: they list properties, they do not sell them. Nearly every listing is placed by an agency or a private seller, and your enquiry goes to them.
- ✓ The same property often appears several times at different prices, because Costa Blanca sellers list with more than one agency. The portal will not tell you which price is real.
- ✓ A portal is enough on its own when you live locally, speak Spanish and have a lawyer. From abroad, someone must still visit, verify and negotiate.
- ✓ Use both: shortlist on the portals, then give one agency the list and let it verify, book and negotiate. On a resale the seller pays the commission, so this costs you nothing extra.
- ✓ OceanHome’s own feed held 2,021 active listings across 250 towns on 16 September 2026, and the same properties reach the portals through us.
What do Idealista and Kyero actually do?
Idealista, founded in Madrid in 2000, is Spain’s largest property portal. Agencies and private sellers pay to list; buyers browse free. It also publishes monthly asking-price reports by town and district, which is why the euro-per-square-metre figures you see quoted by AI assistants and newspapers almost always trace back to Idealista. Kyero is a UK-founded portal built for foreign buyers of Spanish property, with listings supplied by agencies and an interface in several languages.
Neither portal visits a property, holds a deposit, reads a nota simple or negotiates a price. When you click “contact”, the message goes to the agency that placed the listing. So the real choice is not portal versus agency; it is which agency you end up talking to, and if you chose it or the listing did.
Who does the listing agency work for?
The seller. The agency that placed the listing has a mandate from the owner and is paid by the owner at completion. It will show you the property and put your offer forward, but its duty is to get the seller the best deal. That is not sinister; it is the job. It does mean that the checks that protect you, the nota simple, the community debt certificate, the legality of any extension, are not the listing agency’s job either. They are your lawyer’s, and they only happen if someone commissions them before you sign.
An agency you choose yourself, one that has not listed the property, can still show it to you. On the Costa Blanca agencies routinely collaborate and split the seller’s commission. The difference is that the agency you chose has a reason to point out the damp patch.
New build€141,400
€189,900
New build€225,570
New build€250,000
New build€273,800
New build€295,000Why does the same property appear at different prices?
Because most Costa Blanca sellers sign non-exclusive mandates with several agencies, each of which loads the listing with its own photos, its own description and sometimes its own price: an older price nobody updated, or a higher one with a bigger margin built in. Idealista shows the duplicates as separate listings. The only price that matters is the one the seller will accept, and the only way to learn it is to ask which agency holds the mandate and make your offer through one channel.
Days on market are hidden the same way. A flat relisted under a new agency looks fresh. An agency that knows the town knows how long it has really been for sale, and why.
When is a portal enough on its own?
When you can do the agency’s job yourself. That means living close enough to view on a weekday morning, reading Spanish well enough to follow the community minutes and the notary, having a lawyer already, and having the time to chase the seller’s bank for the mortgage cancellation figure. Buyers who tick those boxes can deal directly with private sellers on Idealista and sometimes buy a little below the agency-listed price, because no commission is built in. They still pay the same 10 percent transfer tax, and they carry every check themselves.
What does a local agency add for a buyer from abroad?
The visit, first. Photographs do not show orientation, traffic noise at 7 pm, the state of the communal pool in February or the smell of a ground-floor flat after rain. Someone who lives in the town sees the property before you book a flight and tells you which of your ten shortlisted flats are worth the trip.
Then the sequence. A local agency books the viewings in a route that lets you compare areas at different times of day, negotiates in Spanish with the seller’s side, coordinates the lawyer’s checks so the reservation is not paid blind, attends the notary if you cannot, and switches the utilities into your name afterwards. That sequence, with typical timings, is what our how buying with OceanHome works page sets out step by step. If you are choosing between agencies in Torrevieja, our guide to choosing an estate agent as a Nordic or Dutch buyer compares five of them on dated facts.
How do you use portals and an agency together?
- Build the shortlist on Idealista or Kyero with the filters: town, budget, bedrooms, lift, pool. Save the links.
- Send the whole list to one agency you have chosen using the checks above. Ask it to report on each property: which agency holds the mandate, how long it has really been for sale, the community fee and any known debts, orientation and floor.
- Let the agency cut the list and book a viewing route for your trip. Tell it which properties you have already seen with anyone else.
- Make one offer through one channel, with your lawyer copied in from the reservation onwards.
- Keep using the portals during the process to watch prices in the same building or street; it is the fastest way to know whether an asking price is fair.
What does it cost you?
On a resale the seller pays the agency commission at completion, commonly 3 to 5 percent plus VAT on the Costa Blanca, and the same amount if you found the property yourself. Buying through OceanHome costs a buyer nothing on our listings. What every buyer pays, portal or agency, is the tax and the professional fees: roughly 10 to 13 percent on top of the price for a resale in the Valencia region, itemised in our cost of buying guide. For what your budget actually buys once those costs are included, see what €150,000 buys on the Costa Blanca, or browse properties for sale across our 250 towns.
Sources and dates
- Idealista (idealista.com): company founding, listing model and monthly asking-price reports.
- Kyero (kyero.com): listing model and target audience, as stated on the site.
- OceanHome listing feed: 2,944 listings of which 2,021 active across 250 towns on 16 September 2026, counted by our own integrity check.
- Registro de la Propiedad (Land Registry) for the nota simple and the recorded purchase price; the Valencian Community’s ITP rate of 10 percent for resales.